Beijing protests US' terrorist transfer

Three Chinese prisoners to be moved to Slovakia from Guantanamo Bay

Beijing opposes Washington's decision to send the last three Chinese terrorist suspects who were imprisoned at the Guantanamo Bay detention center to Slovakia, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said on Thursday.

"China always holds that these terrorist suspects should be handed over to China rather than transferring them to a third country. China firmly opposes any country accepting those suspects with any excuse," Qin said.

According to a statement by the Pentagon on Tuesday, terrorist suspects Yusef Abbas, Saidullah Khalik and Hajiakbar Abdul Ghuper, who are members of the Uygur ethnic group, were to be moved from the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba. Slovakia's interior ministry later confirmed that the central European country will take in the three men.

The spokesman said the suspects were members of the separatist East Turkistan Islamic Movement, which is a small Islamic extremist group based in China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

In 2002, the United States designated the group as a supporter of terrorist activity.

In the same year, the United Nations added the group to its list of terrorists and terrorist supporters associated with Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida network.

"They are genuine terrorists. They not only threaten China's security, they will threaten the security of the country that receives them," Qin told a daily news briefing.

"China hopes that the relevant country ... does not give asylum to terrorists, and sends them back to China as soon as possible."

Slovakia, a member state of the European Union and NATO, first accepted three Guantanamo prisoners in 2010, and the ministry said the latest transfer is a continuation of an EU-US agreement aimed at helping President Barack Obama close the prison.

The US said it was grateful to Slovakia for its "humanitarian gesture".

It shows the US exercises double standards when it comes to the terrorism issue in China, observers said.

"The US has never changed these double standards, which are also shown in other cases," said Li Wei, director of the anti-terrorism research center under the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.

Referring to the latest outbreak of violence in Xinjiang on Monday, US State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf called for Chinese security forces to exercise restraint, without condemning the case.

However, responding to a suicide attack in the Russian city of Volgograd one day before the Xinjiang violence, Washington condemned the terrorist attack.

"The US can obviously not encourage violence publicly, but Harf's words show that Washington has not treated the case in Xinjiang as a terrorist attack. ... It is irrational for the US to call for Chinese security forces to exercise restraint, given that it has never exercised restraint itself when dealing with terrorists," said Li.

Most of the Uygurs at Guantanamo were captured near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in late 2001, and were believed to have trained with the Taliban.

Contact the writers at zhouwa@chinadaily.com.cn and zhangfan@chinadaily.com.cn

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

(China Daily 01/03/2014 page12)